Author
Topic: Simple Machines Smiley Contest (Read 309086 times)

Simple Machines would like to announce the opening of our first Smiley Contest, to give our community members the challenge to create some new and exciting smileys.

We are looking to introduce a new smiley set into SMF 2.0, and we have a few concepts that our team members have developed, but we want to see what our community can contribute. We also want to increase the number of smileys available on our modifications site, and start using the "Smileys of the moment" feature in every SMF install. Your work could be broadcast round the SMF ecosystem!

To enter just submit a smiley set to the modifications site and include somewhere in the description "for the Smiley Contest". Alternatively, email them to smile@simplemachines.org in a zipped file. The competition will run for one month, at the end of which voting will be presented to the SMF Team, the Charter Members and the Beta Testers.

Prizes:First prize will win a Simple Machines Charter Membership. (Worth $50!)Runners up (and first place) will have their entries broadcast to every SMF forum with our "Smileys of the Moment" feature.

Smileys Required

angel

angry

cheesy

cool

cry

embarrassed

grin

huh

kiss

lipsrsealed

rolleyes

sad

shocked

smiley

tongue

undecided

wink

blank

Not Required, But Preferred

afro

police

azn

laugh

evil

Terms and Conditions:

All work MUST be your own - plagiarism from other sites/software will disqualify all of your entries!

If the winning entry is selected to be a new default smiley set, that set will become the sole property of Simple Machines LLC.

SMF is under no obligation to use the winning set, nor any other entry as our new default smileys.

Member formed team entries will be eligible to win, but only one Charter Membership will be awarded.

The standard 17 smileys and one blank smiley must be included.

A "cover image" must be included, with all smileys displayed.

If you use a layer file, such as a PSD, please enclose it too.

All smileys must be the same height and between 14-18px.

All smileys must be in either GIF or PNG format with transparent backgrounds.

Good Luck!

Feel free to post any questions, any examples or work in progress art. Multiple entries are allowed.

Hello everyone nice to see you all again.. this is message is directed at the staff and administration the best way i can contribute is by offering my input and feedback We(my company) have personal ran over 100 contest with 1000s of people. Contest that had no budget to over a grand budgets contests. so i hope you will take this constructive criticism.

contest is a good idea but i have a few issues with this contest.. is only open to those that make graphics and only to those that know how to and make smileys so thats like what 5% or less of the members here. so next is who is going to do them? the elite members here who all carry Charter membership which is the freaking prize? are you kidding me? sure thats a great prize if you already dont own it. if you do its nothing. its pretty easy if you spend a little time thinking about a good prize with out spending money something as simple as free hosting for 3 months is a fair and good prize and there's much much more things you can do hell simply put the smiley set on all new smf and i am sure this would be a REALLY great reward for them and make more people want to do it. there is over 2,000 public free smiley sites, with more then 100,000 smileys.

i like contest and think they should happen but i personal think SMF would be better off with other contest that will build user participation help create a bond with the site its members and to improve smf. Something as simple as testimonials contest would be great SMF would get 100s of people that enter. there is over 2,000 public free smiley sites, with more then 100,000 smileys i strongly suggest making this a testimonials

We are missing smiley packages in SMF. And decent smileys are actually one of the few things we seem not be able create our selves.If we made a contest regarding a php mod, we would also rule out a lot of users.

I'm also sure that if a charter member wins the competition, he/she will still be able to use the price for the next year.

A testimonial contest doesn't sound fair to me. You want to make a competition where the person who praise the SMF software most should win? Would that give fair testimonials?

To me, a smiley competition is a good way to get people involved in the SMF software and show their skills.

contest is a good idea but i have a few issues with this contest.. is only open to those that make graphics and only to those that know how to and make smileys so thats like what 5% or less of the members here.

So rare skills are useless? Maybe instead of putting down those that can make smilies, more people should learn how to make them. If your estimate is correct, then that is a really pathetic statistic. I expect at least a 100 entries in this, from which at least 20 will be fantastic.

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so next is who is going to do them? the elite members here who all carry Charter membership which is the freaking prize? are you kidding me? sure thats a great prize if you already dont own it. if you do its nothing.

The majority of people here aren't Charter members. I for one would make a set for no money at all, perhaps just as a thank you for making fantastic software. I have no clue what the benefits of being a Charter member are, but I'll take the swanky user bar, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks along this path.

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its pretty easy if you spend a little time thinking about a good prize with out spending money something as simple as free hosting for 3 months is a fair and good prize

No offense but that's a retarded prize. If you own an SMF forum you most likely already have a host. Unless SMF would be willing to fund my website's expenses for three months, this prize would be completely useless, and I'd rather have no prize at all than to have a completely useless one.

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and there's much much more things you can do hell simply put the smiley set on all new smf and i am sure this would be a REALLY great reward for them and make more people want to do it. there is over 2,000 public free smiley sites, with more then 100,000 smileys.

Did I misread or isn't this exactly what they are doing, putting the set on all SMF 2.0 running forums, as part of its default skin? I don't see how this is more incentive because you gain zero notoriety from it, but it's a nice perk.

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i like contest and think they should happen but i personal think SMF would be better off with other contest that will build user participation help create a bond with the site its members and to improve smf.

Woah now, this isn't the end-all of competitions. From the looks of the prize and the task, this is just a little thing to get a bit more hype going for 2.0 as well as a great method to get a free set of smileys. I'm sure future competitions will include a larger member base, but the more people a contest targets means the less talent it takes to do it.

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Something as simple as testimonials contest would be great SMF would get 100s of people that enter. there is over 2,000 public free smiley sites, with more then 100,000 smileys i strongly suggest making this a testimonials

95% of the premade smilies I've seen are god-awful. There are a handful of terrific sets and artists out there but I'm sure each and every one of those artists will agree with me here: they would rather make a set to win a contest than make a set and get nothing for it.

And a testimonial contest? How would that even profit SMF? Why not just make a thread, asking for people's testimonials for nothing in return? No company in the world needs thousands of them, just several to use on the main site.

I for one an excited to do this, and will start on my entry when I get back into town and have a copy of Photoshop nearby as well as some free time.

Here are a few of mine that I currently use on my site. They do get a little graphic so I'll post just some PG-rated ones here as a preview of the kind of style I'll be going for:

Of course, the trick will be making them transparent .gifs + animated + low file size. Looking forward to the challenge. Good luck to all the other contestants. :]

sodmanccc, I thank you for your views, and yes it is a skilled process to create smileys, however we have other competitions requiring other skills (and the testimonials idea, is a fantastic one I'll be sure to bring up); and they'll all start appearing spread over time

Spektral, we are indeed internally drafting new set, however we are interested in what the community can contribute. First we are in great need of smiley sets on the customization sites, and we want to see some nice smileys as we have old archives of very outdated images, and many sets online we cannot copy obviously for copyright issues. Second fold, we are open to considering a new default set from the community, obviously it has to fill a very specific need, however the prize(s) will be given regardless of whether we use a new default set or not.

Hello everyone nice to see you all again.. this is message is directed at the staff and administration the best way i can contribute is by offering my input and feedback We(my company) have personal ran over 100 contest with 1000s of people. Contest that had no budget to over a grand budgets contests. so i hope you will take this constructive criticism.

contest is a good idea but i have a few issues with this contest.. is only open to those that make graphics and only to those that know how to and make smileys so thats like what 5% or less of the members here. so next is who is going to do them? the elite members here who all carry Charter membership which is the freaking prize? are you kidding me? sure thats a great prize if you already dont own it. if you do its nothing. its pretty easy if you spend a little time thinking about a good prize with out spending money something as simple as free hosting for 3 months is a fair and good prize and there's much much more things you can do hell simply put the smiley set on all new smf and i am sure this would be a REALLY great reward for them and make more people want to do it. there is over 2,000 public free smiley sites, with more then 100,000 smileys.

i like contest and think they should happen but i personal think SMF would be better off with other contest that will build user participation help create a bond with the site its members and to improve smf. Something as simple as testimonials contest would be great SMF would get 100s of people that enter. there is over 2,000 public free smiley sites, with more then 100,000 smileys i strongly suggest making this a testimonials

I hope you find this contribution helpful feedback.

Actually this is better than the last contest. The last contest was theming. With this contest you only need graphics skills. The theming contest you need coding and graphics skills.